


A Great Consolation

by Northerlywind



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Post The Great Game, Suicide Attempt, The Great Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 05:51:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northerlywind/pseuds/Northerlywind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All that's left after The Great Game is traces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Great Consolation

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I am lost without my blogger](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/4277) by Lara. 



Fuck. 

 

Everything is dark. 

 

He opens his eyes.

 

Observes: John Watson.

 

Smiling.

 

Clad in a parka.

 

Also: holding a gun.

 

You can’t be allowed to continue, he says, his mouth perfectly still. 

 

You just can’t. 

 

The gun is forced closer and closer.

 

Sherlock shakes his head, struggling.

 

 _No._  

 

 _John._

 

The trigger clicks.

 

But instead of Sherlock falling to the floor, it’s John. He's absent of mirth now, blood pouring out of his chest.

 

 _Think._

 __

 _This is wrong._

 __

 _No._

 

\---

 

I’d be lost without my blogger.

 

A sentence wholly insignificant at the time, though quite a long time after it would mean something. 

 

\---

 

 _I will burn you. I will burn the heart out of you._

 

It turns out burning the heart out of someone isn’t especially hard to do, even if they claim not to have one. 

 

It is an observation Sherlock will catalogue in his hard drive later on, when he is lucid enough to do so. 

 

\---

 

John’s funeral is simple. Plain. Dull. 

 

Boring. Boring. Boring.

 

Everyone in attendance seems to be of the highly irritating variety, and Sherlock ends up walking out before the service even starts. He doesn’t go anywhere in particular, just walks and walks and walks and walks and walks. He’s without his coat or his scarf, and it’s the dead of winter. 

 

He walks until he can’t walk anymore, literally at a dead end. He shivers without meaning to, huddling against the wall. He sits down, on the cold, cold ground. There’s a thin layer of frost, and he runs his finger along it.

 

He checks his phone.

 

Fuck him.

 

Sherlock throws his phone to the ground, where it is dashed into pieces.

 

His heart.

 

The metaphor repulses him.

 

Sherlock walks backwards, until he’s away, and two minutes later Mycroft’s car pulls up to greet him. 

 

Two men restrain him, tying up his arms, and leave him in the backseat of the car.

 

The drug the men put into him takes hold, and he falls asleep, hands twitching to reach his throat.

 

\---

 

He opens his eyes. Licks his lips. His throat is hoarse, and he struggles to clear it. 

 

John, he whispers, but the word is too fragile, and dissipates. Everything is dark. 

 

Sherlock tries to swallow. 

 

John, he says again. _John_. 

 

One word, four letters, one syllable. 

 

How can it be so painful?

 

Sherlock writhed on the floor.

 

Click.

 

He shouts, noiselessly, against the cloth in his mouth. 

 

Someone reaches over him. Shadows, fragments. It’s all he can see. 

 

Click.

 

Lights, on. 

 

Click.

 

Gun, cocked.

 

Boom.

 

\---

 

Sherlock wakes up with a gasp, in his bedroom, the sounds of life taunting him outside his window. He reaches for his phone. It’s gone. 

 

He stumbles out of bed, nearly colliding with someone.

 

“Oh, hi, you. What are you doing up so late?” 

 

Sherlock looks up, disbelieving. “John,” he gasps. “I-” He’s lost for words, stumbling back. 

 

Pleasant smile disappears. “Are you alright?”

 

 _You can talk, Johnny-boy. Go ahead._

 

“I’m- fine. I-” 

 

“You look pale. You should lie down.” He looks worried now, and Sherlock looks at him. 

 

“John, I-”

 

A frown in return.

 

“I’m not John.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’m not John Watson.”

 

Sherlock nearly falls over, this time, stumbling into the wall. 

 

Hands reach for him.

 

Pass through him.

 

“I am not John Watson. 

 

But I _was._ ” 

 

A sad smile.

 

A brilliant facade. 

 

Click. Boom. Gone.

 

\---

 

Sherlock is left with the tessellated remnants of John’s life. The blog of John H. Watson. 

 

He opens it for the first time in ages. Password protected, easy. He sees the leftover bits of John, the history of him left behind in unfinished pieces, traces. 

 

All they are, traces. 

 

He reads each post, starting from the beginning and goes until the end. Then stops. 

 

Then he pulls up the first page again and rereads everything. 

 

His John.

 

\---

 

Not-John visits him. Not the day after or the week after but the month after. 

 

Sherlock is staring at John’s gun in his palm, loaded with one bullet. (It’s enough.)

 

Not-John appears quietly, but Sherlock hears him.

 

“It’s lonely out there, Sherlock.”

 

He doesn’t know what that means. 

 

“You can’t, Sherlock.”

 

“I have to.”

 

“Please. Sherlock. Please.”

 

Sherlock looks up, and sees Not-John there, looking infinitely pained, heartbroken, whose hands reach out for the gun. 

 

“All I have are traces. It’s not enough.”

 

“Sherlock. Please.”

 

Sherlock looks at the gun, then back to Not-John, whose tears are slowly filling a lonely sea.

 

He looks at his gun again, and slowly passes it over.

 

It clatters to the floor, noisily.

 

Sherlock looks up to an empty room. 

 

\---

 

He dreams of John that night.

 

\---

 

The gun is still there the next morning, and the next night, when Sherlock picks it up again.

 

Nearly the instant his fingers brush the cold gunmetal, Not-John steps into the room. 

 

“Sherlock.” His voice is louder than before. “Don’t.”

 

“Only when I hold the gun-” Sherlock starts, his voice shaking. 

 

 _"The thought of suicide is a great consolation; by means of it one gets through many a bad night."_

 

“Nietzsche.”

 

“How did you know?” A smile.

 

“I didn’t know you read Nietzsche.”

 

“The thought, Sherlock. Not the action.”

 

Sherlock hefts the gun in his hand, remembering.

 

 _Click. Click. Boom._

 

“Click, click, boom,” he says out loud. 

 

He puts down the gun. The thought scares him. When he turns around, nothing, not even the soft rustlings of a breeze, indicates the former presence of anyone else. 

 

\---

 

He doesn’t touch the gun until three years after, when all is done and over with. 

 

His hair is greying, the lines of his face cutting deeper. 

 

There’s nothing left. 

 

His hand trembles as it nears the gun. 

 

He touches it.

 

Nothing happens.

 

He loads the bullet.

 

Click.

 

Safety, off. 

 

Everything is dark.

 

Click, click.

 

He toys with the trigger. 

 

He sits on the dusty bed. 

 

 _Click. Click. Boom._

 

He raises the gun.

 

Then he feels a coolness on his forearm. 

 

He starts, the gun falling out of his hand and onto the ground.

 

“Sherlock.” Not-John is the same as ever, and Sherlock wants to tell him this.

 

 _Click._

 __

 _Click._

 

 _Boom._

 

“It’s been too long.” His voice is husky and he’s not sure what he’s referring to.

 

“I’ll be here.”

 

“Every day?”

 

A sad smile, a reflection. 

 

“Not every day, no.” A pause. “But I’ll be there when you need me. Until you can cope on your own.”

 

“I can’t-” His name is still too painful to say. “I can’t.” He’s crying now, his tears dripping onto his hands and drowning into the floor.

 

Click.

 

It would be so easy. 

 

"Sherlock, don't. They need you. I need you to stay.”

 

Sherlock hunches over himself, his body shaking. He feels something on his cheek - not tears, but a cool hand. 

 

Not-John’s. Sherlock lifts his head. He looks at the gun, lying forlornly on the floor. 

 

The ghost of John Watson holds Sherlock's face tightly, as he shudders.

 

Sherlock feels a shiver up his spine and, whilst trying to take hold of his impossible John, says, "I am lost without my blogger."

 

“I know.” Not-John stands up. “Goodbye, Sherlock.” A sad smile, oh so sad. 

 

 _Thus John Watson departs this world forever,_ Sherlock thinks. 

 

All that’s left is melancholy.

 

He picks his gun off his floor, but this time no remainder of John is there to stop him.

 

 _Click._

 

The bullet goes through the wall.


End file.
